Radio Free Skaro #256 – State of Play-Doh
< The Almost People, part 2 of Doctor Who’s sentient play-doh saga initiated last week with The Rebel Flesh, proved to be only quasi-compelling to the RFS lads. Indifference shifted to both gasps of astonishment and grumblings of unhappiness at the “game-changing” cliffhanger to this week’s festivities…and we still have A Good Man Goes to War to look forward to next week (or the week after that, SPACE and BBC America viewers.) In the meantime, stats were examined, asteroid-eating goats invented, and Journey’s End was maligned with a naughty word. Just another normal day here at Radio Free Skaro. |
| Show Notes:
– Skaro Shop…North America! |
9 Comments on “Radio Free Skaro #256 – State of Play-Doh”
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Hmm… The “signal” you guys are talking about is what’s animating flesh-Amy, because it’s the real Amy that’s controlling it. It also could have been spying on the Doctor or it could have potentially been used against him in the future. The Doctor knows what’s up and knows that he’s going to have to go after whatever has kidnapped Amy — the first thing to do is deactivate her double.
Err, sorry, that wasn’t clear. What I meant to say was that the ganger Amy wasn’t independent or sentient. It was just a shell for the real Amy’s consciousness. Breaking the link meant having to cut off what was keeping the shell together.
Tom’s right. Amy’s Ganger wasn’t early flesh like the others. Hers was refined enough to take a beating from the solar tsunami and still keep functioning exactly as it was engineered to, as an avatar.
I don’t know why it was so important that the doctor cut the link, but imagine Amy going through labor in a body that isn’t pregnant while her real body is giving birth wouldn’t be so great. It’s not like the Doctor and Rory could do anything to help Amy while she’s giving birth god knows how far away.
Hi Guys,
Many thanks for your review of The Almost people which I quiet enjoyed… I have watched DW since 1969 and listen to your podcast every week . I really enjoy your comments and generally agree with you all particularly Warren, however I feel I must make a comment on your remakes today regarding the BAFTA best actor award which you seemed to be very dismissive of. I know you guys are anglophiles but I do not think you realised how important ” Morecambe and Wise” ( Eric and Ernie) are to the British mentality. To highlight the point over last Christmas in the UK Eric and Ernie which was broadcast on a minor channel rather late one night turned out to be one of the most popular shows over the Christmas period.
Morecambe and Wise in the 70s were the most popular TV performers in the UK and their Christmas show became part of the Christmas tradition for us, checkout the viewing figures; basically the whole UK population watched their show. Even now most of the population of the UK are still in love with Eric and Ernie and that is why Sherlock and DW failed to get the best actor award and to be fair Eric and Ernie was pretty bloody good anyway.
Cheers
Gary
TomZ, Eliaz – those are perfectly plausible inferences, but it’s absolutely not stated in the episode itself, and given how fundamental to the preceding two episodes the validity of the Flesh people as life forms was, it really should have been. I’m not condemning it just yet – there’s clearly some ‘splainin’ to be done next week, and there are several ways the Doctor’s flat-out execution of the ganger-Amy could be explained/redeemed, but as it stands it left an incredibly bad taste in my mouth, especially coming after the strange, dramatically unnecessary “oh, and by the way, the TARDIS made the surviving gangers properly human after all, so all that ethical hand-wringing was for nothing” cop-out.
I’ve had my problems with the morality of Moffat’s WHO writing before – he’s got a distinct tendency to come up with situations which raise disturbing moral questions of which he seems completely unaware (or, worse, not at all interested in), and this was a particularly glaring example of that.
Good show, guys, as always. And it feels good to agree with just about everything Chris said for a change 😉
To quote a movie I enjoy, “Questions, questions, too many questions.” What we are having a big problem with in this season is what was pointed out by another fan. We have reached the heart of what the Moffat era is going to be like. Last season he weened us away from the RTD mold of how thinga rare done and we now have entered his realm as the guiding force of the show.The big problem for me is that while we are getting some answers, we are still in the dark on many things. I am certainly becoming a victom of his writing as I can not figure out what is coming next. It is a good and a bad thing. I am confident that he has been dropping hints in every story and yet I am not finding them all. I love mysteries but I suck at solving them.
As for the Amy ganger, I suspect she was not in any way like the others. Amy’s mind woke up right away when the flesh was done in by the sonic screwdriver. It is obvious that the ganger was created to allow the kidnappers to get that child, the question is what process did they use. Was amy’s actual mind needed to be in that ganger to fool Rory and the Doctor. Perhaps her actual mind being in it helped to stabilize the flesh. The other independent gangers may have had the memories of the real people but they were not stable. As for who is behind all of the events we have seen, I am drawing a big blank. I have heard speculation of Omega and the Omega symbol can be seen again in the new trailer but I can’t say that is a definative answer to the many questions. Moffat is a great planner and keep us guessing and you can’t say anything is definative with him.
I will have to quote Warren again from a few podcasts back, “Just shut up and watch the show.” (I hope you might add that to a t-shirt.)
Perhaps it’s wrong of me but I trust the Doctor. That is to say, when he feels comfortable puddling flesh Amy I trust that he isn’t also killing a sentient person just for dramatic effect but that between the early technology we were shown on the island and the flesh used for Amy enough advances were made to eliminate the side effect that was independent consciousness in the flesh copies.
I quite thought this episode redeemed last week’s which suffered from a lack of anything really happening and, worse, a lack of believable motivation for most of the characters to commit to the murder spree they attempted to go on. This week everyone showed considerable doubt and eventually came to their senses except for the clearly unstable (mentally, I mean) Jennifer.
The one thing that really bugs me, and I must admit I didn’t give it too much thought while I was viewing it (all caught up in the excitement after all), is why anyone other than the weird CG creature formerly known as “Ganger”-Jennifer had to die at the end. Not only could they all have hopped off in the TARDIS and let the monster blow up with the island but if there really was a need to undo her with the screwdriver, just to make sure she didn’t somehow survive, then the regular non puddle-able Doctor could have done it from the door of the TARDIS and there you go! Two extra lives saved.
Yes, the scene in which Mr. Dad dies so that the copy can (hu)man up did feel a bit stuck in there and did break the illusion somewhat and reminded me that, yes, this is just a scripted television story I’m watching. It makes sense for the scene to be in the story, it just struck me as a bit forced the way it ended up.
On the whole I’d say the two-parter got a lot better once you get the final half, the first did not stand well on its own. Better than last year’s Silurian, not nearly as good as the one with the Angels, but then that one had River.
Speaking of which, wow, am I excited about the mid-series finale. Maybe I risk being guilty of the same sort of hype that hurt Gaiman’s episode but mid-series finale with (possibly significant answers as to the murky history of) River Song sounds pretty darned amazing to me. A bit worried about the dodgy chaps with the off brand lightsabers, they look like they borrow too much from the real thing to be interesting as their own thing, but we seem to get Amy and her baby, Patchy McOneeye, a space army (possibly evil) and, did I mention, River [expletive deleted] Song!
P.S.
Love the show, guys, keep up the good work.
Hi Mark, I see what you’re seeing how it wasn’t “stated” explicitly, but I didn’t really feel like it needed to be. The fact that we kept seeing the eyepatch lady bleeding into Amy’s POV seemed enough of a clue on its own. The real Amy is not fully aware of what’s really happening until the link is broken. Plus the Doctor kept sending messages to the real Amy through the ganger Amy– “breathe!”, “only push when she tells you”, “we will find you”, etc. I don’t know, I’ve heard some people say they didn’t understand it until they saw Confidential. I actually thought it was fairly clear.
Hi guys,
Love the show and all the discussion, but there was one thing in this epsiode’s news sectiont hat bugged.
The Constellation Awards are handed out at the Polaris Sci-Fi and Fantasy convention, not at “some nameless hotel in Toronto” and it is mostly the Polaris attendees who nominate and vote for the awards. Polaris is a fan-run convention that used to be called Toronto Trek and this year is their 25th anniversary.
It’s just a small thing, but as someone who has been attending the convention for 10 years, I was happily listening to the show and then felt really sad when you guys joked about the location as though it had so little importance. In the scheme of things, maybe not, but plenty of Doctor Who fans go to Polaris every year, and I’m sure more than just me listen to your show. 🙂